Dull and Boring

I asked for a dull and boring year. Other than a few interesting days early in the year, it has been dull and boring. The problem with that is it makes for fewer posts. I do not have as much material to write about and the material I do have is less interesting. School has also settled into a routine. I know a few people in my math class, but I do not know them very well. I may get to know some of my writing classmates because we break up into small groups and work together. It seems to me that I am never quite satisfied. Give me excitement, and I want dull and boring. Now that my life has been dull and boring, I am complaining about it. Actually, I am very satisfied with my life, but I would like to have just a bit more to write about.

My Trip North

I returned, late last night, from a trip north to visit family. The house where I stayed is on a quiet country road beside a lake. We saw four deer eating beside the road. Some of the residents have seen as many as forty deer together. That is something that few of us have ever had the privilege of seeing. On my drive home, I saw three more deer grazing along the highway. They were used to the traffic and hardly looked up as the vehicles sped by.

I spent more than 12 hours driving over the weekend so I was glad to get back home. I drove through several villages along the way. The lights of the houses, peeking out through the falling snow, looked inviting as I drove past. Each beacon of light promising warmth and shelter from the cold and darkness. Each village that I drove through brought me closer to my own home and back into the surrounding countryside. Farmhouses and their beacons of light kept me company until the city lights overpowered their faint glow.

January Thaw

Our warm spell is slipping away. No snow, yet. The first few days of next week may bring us enough snow to cover the grass. In some ways I am happy that it is cooling. My roses would soon be growing if it stayed as warm as it has been. Maybe they are growing. I haven't looked at them for a couple of days. I looked around the yard today and thought, very briefly, about doing some yard work. January is not usually a good time for yard work in our climate, unless you want to shovel snow. I'm not doing any yard work and I'm not shovelling snow either. That sounds like a good deal to me.

More Exam Results

I have gotten the results of my last Christmas exam, another B, in linguistics. The three exams that I wrote recently are separated by only three marks. I'm not sure if that is good or bad. I did sacrifice most of my linguistics study time for stats and that plan seems to have worked. Otherwise, the spread would have been greater. I would have gotten a higher linguistics mark and a lower stats mark. French is my best subject and it will help me keep my average in A territory as long as I keep working at the same level. I've forgotten so much over the Christmas break. A month is a long time to not use another language and expect to stay at the same level of comprehension.

Sleeping In

I can barely believe it, but I slept in this morning until ten. I missed my first two classes. I must have needed the sleep because it was bright and sunny this morning and that would normally have made me wake up much earlier. Maybe all of the excitement of a new term is wearing me out.

I like our math prof's style. He tells us what is important and writes "important" on the board and draws a rectangle around it. My kind of guy, no guessing about what might be worth learning very well. He did a couple of the assigned problems and told us that they were the kind to expect on tests and exams.

I think that I will enjoy the writing course. The prof is very energetic and engaging. We had four more recruits join up today making 11 in the class now. I hope that the class stays quite small.

I'm still having trouble with my writing. No more long breaks for me.

Winter? Term

The winter term began today with the snow melting and winter jackets discarded. There were even a brave few who wore short sleeve tee shirts outside this afternoon.

My New Year's wish for myself was to have a dull and boring year. It has not happened. Things got interesting on the second but they have settled down again, so maybe it will be more dull and boring than interesting.

It has been a month since I attended classes, so the university was a bit unfamiliar in some ways. When I was walking to my locker, I could not remember my combination, but decided to just open the lock without thinking. That worked. Maybe I should try not thinking more often. I also forgot the room number of my first class of the day. I walked along a hallway of an older building looking at a bunch of identical doors trying to remember which one I wanted. At least one other student had the same problem, but he had not slept very much and had just arrived in town after a four hour flight.

I started two new classes today. Math and a writing course. There are about 130 students in the math class and only seven of us in the writing class, which is good, because it is an intensive course. Math got off to a good start. Our prof was trying to explain why you should switch doors on game shows where you select one door hoping to get a prize, then the host opens a door revealing no prize and asks you if you want to switch doors. It seems illogical to switch, but the odds of getting the prize go up if you switch. He could do something like that with our final exam. Do you feel lucky today? Calculate the probability of getting a better mark if you switch doors. Of coruse, probability is irrelevant when you lose.

My schedule is more workable this term. I have enough time between classes to get some work done. I got a good start today and plan on keeping it up.

My writing seems to have suffered from the long break. Writing is something that I have to do regularly. I am finding it hard to get into the flow of writing.

Retirees Returning To University

I had an interesting conversation with a physician today. Whenever I go to see him about my sleep apnea we usually talk more about other things. Today was no exception. We are members of the same parish so we talked about that for a while. After I told him that I had returned to university, he asked me how I liked it. I told him that I loved it and that the other students accepted me quite well. He said that a colleague of his, who retired recently, returned to university and had the same reaction as I had. He went on to say that he has plans to return to university when he retires. Watch for more older students coming to a university near you.

Christmas 2007

In many ways Christmas was a non event for me. I did not celebrate Christmas. Instead, I celebrated life and family. We laughed and told stories, we played games and shared our experiences. We talked about the future and remembered the past. We lived each moment to the fullest. We ate together and played together. Some of us went swimming. I took two of my grandchildren sledding. We enjoyed the simple pleasure of being with each other. Perhaps I did celebrate Christmas after all.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of you. I hope that you have a good year. My wish for myself is to have a dull and boring year. I have had enough excitement in the last few months to do me for a few years.

The Biggest Kid At School

One of my granddaughters is in kindergarten in a French Immersion programme. She is an enthusiastic student of French so I thought that I would talk to her in French while we were together. She wanted to know why I could speak French. I told her that I was going to school where I was learning French. She stood up, her eyes wide open in surprise, and said "You must be the biggest kid at school."